Tag: mobile commerce growth

M-commerce in China expanded by 168 percent in the first quarter

This massive market is still seeing smartphone based shopping growth at an exponential rate.

The m-commerce market in China has seen a tremendous growth throughout the first quarter of this year, according to the figures that have been released in a report by a company called iResearch, which is based in Beijing.

The report indicated that in Q1 of this year, there was an increase in mobile shopping by 168 percent.

This brought the Chinese m-commerce market up to an estimated $59 billion. The growth rate in that market was tremendously greater than the overall mobile shopping increase seen globally, which was a very healthy 45 percent. The iResearch figures were based on measurements of the gross merchandise volumes (GMV). The prediction that was made based on the data is that there will have been a continued rapid growth throughout Q2 2015.

M-commerce purchases made up almost half of all online shopping that occurred in China during Q1.

M-commerce - Chinese FlagThe amount of online shopping that occurred over mobile devices more than doubled from what it had been during the same quarter last year, when it had been a much lower 22 percent. The data from last year’s fourth quarter showed that the GMV was peaking at $61.25 billion, after which, the figures dropped by 4.7 percent in the following quarter.

It was pointed out by iResearch that online shoppers in China have been increasingly embracing researching products and making purchases over their smartphones and tablets, and that growth of traffic over PCs has started slowing down.

The largest contributor to mobile GMV was Taobao Wireless (which is owned by Alibaba), but even that share fell from having been 87.4 percent in the first quarter of 2014 to be 84.5 percent in the same quarter, this year. The reason is that competitors are starting to gain some meaningful share. These include companies such as Vip and JD.com. Vip is now up to 2.8 percent while JD.com has increased to 5.2 percent (after it was at 3.3 percent, last year)

According to iResearch, this m-commerce competition has become increasingly intense, as each of the major participants battle to be able to grab hold of a greater share through new efforts and initiatives.

Mobile commerce sales in the U.S. to grow by 74 percent this year

Research released by Internet Retailer has shown that smartphone based shopping is rapidly gaining popularity.

It is no mystery that making sure that a store has an online presence – especially one in which products can be researched (or, even better, purchased) – is an important element in improving a retailer’s successes, but recent research is also showing that mobile commerce needs to play a bigger role in this effort, as consumers are looking to their smartphones and tablets on an increasing basis when it comes to finding the products and services that they want to buy.

A recent study involving the data from 366 American retailers has shown that m-commerce sales will be up 74 percent.

The study was conducted by Internet Retailer, which looked at U.S. retailers and their mobile commerce strategies. This was published in the 2015 Mobile 500. What it determined was that this year’s sales over smartphones and tablets would reach $59 billion, which is an increase of 74 percent over the $34 billion in sales that was achieved last year. Moreover, it also predicts that sales over smartphones and tablets will make up 23 percent of the online sales total for this year in the United States.

This shows that the pace of mobile commerce is growing faster than that of online shopping, overall.

U.S. Mobile Commerce on the riseIn the second quarter of this year, the online retail sales – including purchases made over desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices – rose by 15.7 percent, said the Commerce Department. While this is certainly a solid rate of growth, it is also very clear that it is much lower than the increases being seen in m-commerce sales.

The two companies that achieved the highest mobile sales so far in 2014, with a combined $30.8 billion, are Amazon.com (in first place) and Apple (in second place). Those two companies, alone, hold a 47 percent share of the Mobile 500 smartphone and tablet based sales total.

That said, the report also acknowledged that mobile commerce as a market is nowhere near mature and there is still a great deal of room for growth among existing players as well as among new entrants.